One year ago, things looked fairly bright for Denny Hamlin. He had made the Chase every season he had raced. He was running well and Joe Gibbs Racing seemed on top of its game with the addition of Matt Kenesth.

And then came the wreck at Auto Club Speedway as he battled Joey Logano for the lead on the final lap. His car turned toward the wall and he kept his foot in the gas, hoping to get it turned toward the finish line.

Instead he hit the wall in one of the worst areas — an inside wall with no SAFER Barrier, where the pavement had a slight incline approaching the concrete.

Hospitalized for a day, Hamlin suffered a compression fracture in his lower back. He missed four races and started a fifth before getting out of his car early.

When he returned to racing full time in May, something seemed missing. Hamlin really wasn’t himself. He didn’t run consistently well. There were times when he and crew chief Darian Grubb seemed totally out to lunch. This wasn’t the confident Hamlin, the one with a swagger, the one that seemed to race with a “come get you some” attitude.

He contemplated ending the season and having back surgery to repair bulging disks that he has battled the last five years. But the 33-year-old Hamlin instead opted for injections in his back that numbed the pain enough for him to do more therapy and more activity, working out enough to help get his back better and stronger.

His win in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway seemed to bring back a little bit of that swagger. And his quick start in 2014 at Daytona — a win in the Sprint Unlimited and a qualifying race followed by a second-place finish in the Daytona 500 — appeared to be a sign that Hamlin was back in 2014 and taking no prisoners.

Yet over the first month of 2014, not much else has gone his way. He finished 19th at Phoenix, then 12th at Las Vegas. He won the pole at Bristol but came home sixth, in part, by staying out when many others pitted with 78 laps left. Granted the JGR organization doesn’t look as strong as it did a year ago, but really, just where is Hamlin going?

This is a pivotal year for Hamlin. He needs to show that he can overcome the injury from a year ago. He can’t just win an exhibition race and an occasional pole.

The Hamlin that we’ve come to know has been a driver who leads plenty of laps and whose name routinely is in the conversation when talking about potential race winners.

Grubb also is in the last year of his contract with JGR. If they don’t get in sync, what happens next?

Hamlin has yet to show the consistency that erases doubts over whether he has overcome the impact of the California crash a year ago.

Maybe this column is five weeks too early. Maybe he will win races at the tracks he’s the best at — Martinsville and Richmond — in the upcoming weeks. Last fall at those tracks, he finished 21st at Richmond and seventh after winning the pole at Martinsville.

Who, in his post-injury world, is the real Denny Hamlin? Is he the driver who won at Homestead or the one who finished 20th or worse in 16 of the 26 races after his injury?

The jury is still out. The confusion is still there. It’s kind of like a bad back. Good some days but painful to bear on others. Time and readjustments often help until the next pang of pain.

And the wonder is always there: On the day when things go well, is everything better or is it just a tease with excruciating bad days down the road?